French Immersion and the Capital Strategic Plan

Chair Gardiner and Trustees of the Halton District School Board, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight on behalf of the parents, staff, students, and extended community of École Pine Grove School.

We are aware of the recommendations of the Capital Strategic Plan, as you are aware that one of the recommendations is for the closure and disposition of École Pine Grove School in 2004-2005.  The CSP outlines difficult decisions to be made, and we believe that the Board will make these decisions based on the needs of students in all of Halton.

We represent a large community.  Not a community with a particular geographical boundary, not a community looking to preserve a building, but a community that embraces and believes in linguistic duality.  As a community, we believe that the French Immersion program is more important than bricks and mortar, and that our community is more important than any arbitrary line on a map.  Pine Grove has 600 students from more than 500 families, and a staff of more than 35.  Our community includes students from all of West Oakville, both north and south of the QEW.  We are the home school for this broad and diverse community and we have neighbours, friends and colleagues at every school in West Oakville. 

As parents, we made a choice when our children reached school age, to enroll them in a dynamic program open to every student in Halton. This program provides more than a functional ability in a second language; it provides an opportunity to be bilingual in a multilingual world.

Our students, teachers and parents have all grown to understand and appreciate the benefits of a single-track French Immersion centre.  At Pine Grove, French language resources are abundant, enabling students to do research in their language of instruction (rather than translating from English).  At least half of our teaching staff are bilingual, and we are fortunate to have a vice principal and a physical education teacher who speak and teach in both languages.  There is a commitment to bilingualism and an environment where French is expected and encouraged.  Announcements and opening exercises are conducted in both official languages of our country.  Student presentations and school events such as our “Café de l’école” and our French book sale promote and expand the use of French as a second language beyond the curriculum. 

Parents at Pine Grove are typically anglophone with some high-school French. Our biggest fear is that the French Immersion program will be dispersed across the community, so that the powerful cultural influence of a French language centre is lost and the French language resource base we have so painstakingly assembled over the years is dissipated across our English-oriented school district.  It is difficult to find the French language resources necessary to support our children’s second language education at home.  Their success is tied to our French Immersion centre. 

You, as a board are considering a new consolidation and closure policy that REQUIRES that an elementary school be reviewed when its enrolment drops below 50%.  There are two rationales for this: one fiscal and the other pedagogical.  You have heard arguments from altruists in developing communities suggesting we can’t afford to keep older half-empty schools open.  We can’t disagree with them.  Their arguments are echoed by your administration and your colleagues who also express concern about problems supporting program in schools where multi-grade splits become necessary and where educational resources are limited.  If this precedent setting recommendation becomes policy, its rigorous and equitable application across the Halton District School Board is no doubt expected. 

Today, in Halton, 25% of all students entering grade one are enrolled in French Immersion.  Of the students in grades one through OAC, 17% have chosen this program.  What chance is there of supporting French Immersion in a dual-track school if (for the sake of argument) students in the program account for only 20% of that school’s population?  Even the new “model” schools that hold 550 to 650 students would accommodate less than 125 Immersion kids across eight grades. That’s an average of 15 students per grade, likely 30 kids in grade one and as few as ten in each of the senior grades.  For any stand-alone program, this scenario would surely trigger a consolidation.

French Immersion is considered a “mobile program”.  This means it can be accommodated wherever you have a space.  This does not mean that it can be supported in bits and pieces across the system.  In immersion, two classes are taught by a dedicated teaching team of two teachers, one English and one French.  Half the day for each class is taught in English and the other half in French.  This is a coordinated effort, and each teacher teaches and grades twice the usual complement of students.  There are no economies to be gained by sticking a vestigial French Immersion program in every school in the District.  Whether it would complement the “Core French” programs or not, the program itself would fail in such a dual-track environment.

In conclusion, we ask that you consider the implications for the French Immersion program as you plan for the long-term needs of all students in Halton.  The Pine Grove community would very much like to be a part of the process.  We believe the Halton District School Board is committed to French Immersion and shares with us the desire to see the program succeed.  We believe the single-track French Immersion model succeeds in delivering program where other models fail.  We recognize too, that it is difficult to fit centres, whether for French Immersion, Vocational, Gifted, or other programs, into an accommodation plan whose primary objective is administrative efficiency.  It must be noted, that some of the gains in administrative efficiency will be at the expense of fiscal efficiency and program effectiveness.

Our school has formed a French Immersion sub-committee and begun work on a vision for the future of French-as-a-second-language education in Halton.  Other Immersion schools in Halton are doing the same.  Halton-wide, we will be working for the success of our children, our schools and our local communities.  We understand the current fiscal constraints of the education system.  We understand the need to build schools for new communities.  We trust you will consider our concerns and accept our contributions in your plan to address this need.  We trust that a thriving French Immersion community will be part of your vision for the future of education in Halton.  Thank you.